Council moves to tighten oversight of how old clothes are disposed of in the city

Clothes bank operators are to face fines in future if they don’t tidy up around banks in the city, show tender documents issued earlier this month by Dublin City Council.

Penalties include €50 if a council official sees an overflowing bring bank, and another €200 if overflowing banks aren’t emptied within 24 hours of being reported to an operator.

Dublin City Councillors regularly complain of overflowing clothes banks in their neighbourhoods, and of soggy garments scattered out in the rain.

They have also raised concerns about where the clothes that are left and collected end up.

And the tender documents issued by the council show an increased interest and attention not just in the efficiency of clothes collection, but, importantly, in what happens to the textiles after that. 

That’s something that some Dublin city councillors and TDs have been pressing for.

In the Dáil earlier this month, Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh said that there is an urgent need “to make sure that when those tenders go out from different local authorities, this is not just for collection and export abroad, but for collection, separation and reuse”. 

“These have to be central,” said Ó Snodaigh, who also chairs the social enterprise Liberty Recycling, which handles textile waste and runs charity shops.

Separating textiles

Since the beginning of the year, under EU law, Ireland is supposed to have had an entirely separate system of collection for used textiles, so none ends up in the black bin.

At the moment, Ireland does have a network of collection points for used textiles, which is made up of local authority and charity bring banks, charity shops, and private bring banks, said Alan Dillon, the Fine Gael TD in the Dáil earlier this month.

It also includes some take-back schemes in stores, said Dillon, who is minister of state for the circular economy.

The current collection system for textiles “requires substantial enhancement to align with circular economy principles”, Dillon says.

Because only a fraction of Ireland’s used clothes end up in this collection system. 

About a third of the 164,000 tonnes of textiles that are discarded each year in Ireland are funnelled through it, estimates research by Circle Economy, a non-profit based in Amsterdam. 

In the Dáil on 10 April, Dillon said his department was developing a road-map for reuse and repurposing of textiles. 

This “will set out how we enhance our separate collection system, and it will be launched for public consultation in the coming weeks”, he said.

The Department of Environment hasn’t responded to queries sent Monday as to when this will be and what measures are to be proposed.

Moving to collect all the textile waste separately from black-bin rubbish is just one part of the puzzle, though. 

Imagine if, say, you had textile bins in every household now, says Kim O’Driscoll, who runs a repair and reuse design studio in the north inner-city called Project Prolong. 

“Where are you going to put it? That’s going to be loads more textiles that are collected,” she says.

Ó Snodaigh, the TD and chair of Liberty Recycling, said there’s only so much material that can or will end up in charity shops. 

If you all of a sudden manage to divert all waste textiles from landfill, then current warehouses and textile-waste operators in Ireland wouldn’t be able to handle it without a huge increase in capacity, he says.

That’s something that Liberty Recycling does want to help handle, he says. “But it’s not something we can do overnight.”

Encouraging transparency

Dublin City Council’s tender – which has put up two lots of collection sites for operators to bid for contracts to operate – strengthens data collection and transparency around where textile waste that is collected ends up. 

At the moment, the vast majority of clothes collected are exported without being sorted or graded. 

Generally speaking, about 10 percent of worn clothing that is collected in Europe is extracted for European vintage markets, 20 percent is downcycled to reuse as something else like rags, and most is sent to countries in the Global South and can end up worn again or often in landfill.

Textile Recycling Limited, better known as Clothes Pod, operates most of the city’s textile banks at the moment. Its managing director Lee Clifford has said that he doesn’t want to talk about the business.

But Ó Snodaigh, the TD and chair of Liberty Recycling says that it sorts the clothes it collects into a few streams and is pretty much the only operator that does at the moment.

Some of these clothes go to charity shops, some are turned into rags for the motor industry, which will end up in landfill or incinerated at some stage, he says, and some are bought by importers in African countries.

Those importers aren’t buying the bales of textiles blind, he says. “It’s all sorted, graded, they can come over and watch the process.” 

The recent council tender says that in deciding who will win the contracts for waste textile banks, it will assign a greater value to efforts by an operator to separate, reuse, and track waste with a verifiable audit trail.

Bidders have to submit details of the “sorting process used to separate items to be sold for reuse as originally intended, those sold for repurposing and any waste textiles, including details of the grading process”, it says.

They also have to give details for percentages of textiles sold for reuse as originally intended and those sold for repurposing, and how they are repurposed, it says. “Details of how the tender proposes to dispose of waste items must also be submitted.”

“There must be a verifiable audit trail from receipt of materials to the end destination supported by the necessary paperwork,” it says. 

Bidders also have to explain how they will “ensure that the textiles are collected in a way that creates a new low carbon Dublin economy”. Also, how they will “assess the ethics of the organisations to which the textiles are sold and reused by”.

And “how the tenderer will use the opportunity to increase access to economic opportunity for Dublin residents”, it says.

Encouraging reuse

One of the mechanisms that a report last year from the National Textile Advisory Group said is needed to help fund better and more complete collection and reuse of textiles in Ireland is an “extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme”. 

An EPR scheme is a way to finance costs relating to environmentally-friendly management of a product at the end of its life, by putting the costs for that on manufacturers or sellers of the product. 

Once the European Union’s new waste framework directive comes in, European countries will have to set up an EPR scheme for textiles, says Jordan Girling, head of EPR for WRAP, a circular economy NGO in the UK.

“We’re expecting the finalised directive to be published in July this year,” Girling said.

Regulations for EPR schemes for batteries and packaging are worded to focus on recycling, he said, but this will be different. The wording puts the emphasis on reuse, he says.

Across Europe, France has been an outlier in that it has had an EPR for textiles since 2008, Girling says. The Netherlands set one up much more recently. 

They illustrate ways to set up EPRs to encourage reuse of textiles, though.

As in the Netherlands, you could set mandatory targets for companies that sell clothes to reuse a certain portion of them within the country, he says. “Then it’s on the companies that sell the products to implement measures to hit those targets.”

An example of that is Penneys take-back clothes bins, which were launched in October 2021. As of the end of March 2025, 254 tonnes of textiles had been collected from Irish stores, a Penneys spokesperson said by email. (They wouldn’t say how much they sold in the same period.)

Donated items are sorted and graded by its partner Yellow Octopus Circular Solutions, the spokesperson said. Of the tonnes collected so far, 73 percent has been reused and 27 percent recycled, they said. 

Clean items are resold in four European countries through independent clothes stories authorised by Yellow Octopus, and items in a poor condition are turned into products like mattress filling, they said. 

Girling says an EPR scheme can also incentivise reuse by making the EPR fees – the levy charged to manufacturers and sellers – for the products a bit cheaper if they meet certain criteria, he says. “It’s what is called eco-modulated EPR fees.”

For durable products, the fees are lower. For low-quality fast-fashion that is hard to recycle, you ramp them up, he says.

O’Driscoll, who runs Project Prolong out of the culture hub A4 Sounds just off Upper Dorset Street, says she also has ideas for how the scheme could also help fund the reuse eco-system in Ireland.

France’s EPR scheme is used to fund a “repair bonus”, she says. People get a substantial immediate discount on the price of a repair, if they go to a certified repairer to get clothes or shoes fixed. That repairer can claim back that discount.

“It’s really practical if you’re a seamstress, as well,” she says. If somebody gets one thing repaired, they are so much more likely to get a second thing repaired, she says.

Imagine charity shops with in-house repairers, she says. “I would love to see that.”

Using money from the EPR scheme to invest in structures that keep clothing accessible and affordable without  fast-fashion – so swap shops like Change Clothes based on Thomas Street, and workshops for mending skills – would be important, she says.

O’Driscoll keeps a spreadsheet of everything she repairs, how long it takes, what it was. Already this year, she has hit three figures. “I think I’m on 118,” she says.

Often, especially for the smaller stuff, she just wants to teach people how to do it themselves though, she says, to lean in and say: “Can I just teach you this now? And then you can do it forever? I just really want people to learn.”